To Repel Ghosts: The Remix

by Kevin Young

Revamped from its original "double album" version of 350 pages into this unique "remix," To Repel Ghosts captures the dynamic work and brief life of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

In spare, jazzlike verse Kevin Young tells the story of Basquiat's rise from the mock prophet and graffiti artist SAMO to one of the hottest painters of the 1980s ("blue-chip Basquiat / playing the bull / market"), exploring the artist's bouts with fame and heroin, mourning his untimely death, and celebrating his legacy. Along the way Young riffs on Basquiat's paintings and sayings, on the music he loved, on the artists he ran with (Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, among them), and on the black heroes (Charlie Parker, Muhammad Ali, Billie Holiday) who inspired him.

Young's poetic channeling of Basquiat--a jostling, poignant brand of downtownspeak--makes for an urban epic in the tradition of Langston Hughes's "A Dream Deferred." To Repel Ghosts , along with Young's Jelly Roll: A Blues and Black Maria , his recent book of film noir verse, forms an American trilogy-- Devil's Music --that explores other art forms through poetry. In its creation, Yound has become a poet whose work speaks both for and beyond his genre, with a music all its own.

Genres: Poetry, Biography, Art

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2005

About the author

Kevin Young is an American poet heavily influenced by the poet Langston Hughes and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1992-1994), and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective.

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.

His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.

His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.

After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.

Reviews

[Lauren]

Young writes in his liner notes to this 'double album' that the work is not a biography, but "an extended riff--Basquiat and his work serves as a bass line, a rhythm section, a melody from which the poems improvise." I would love to hear him read these out loud. The words are the clanging death knell--life knell, even--of Basquiat's life, reportraitizing and reanimating the man's elegiac self portraits into a cacophony of sounds. I think many of the poems don't always make sense, as Young folds in a great number of uber-esoteric references, but they have a way of ringing true to the poetical mind even when the mind can't really understand. He veers off topic from Basquiat here and there, talking proudly for some time of the legendary African-American boxer Jack Johnson. There's a lot to learn about the black experience here, at least for a white girl like me.

Also, the first poem of the book -- "Negative" -- should be read by everyone. It's brilliant.

[Audie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once he died they went in
& took out everything-
paintings,

of course, some unfinished -
others the wavy wary
walk of the end - more

Basquiat saved & liked
(not in that order)
like Jack Johnson

that sang to him. Those got kept.

They say they took his
entire record collection,
platter after platter

he’s spent years
& dollars collecting
while the rest of us

went crazy for mirrored
one-sided discs
that, lighter, cost more

& sounded almost
worse - LPs & 78s
& 45s bought like scag

from a regular source
on the street - dark
discs he once held like a note

& loved -

& just left
them on the curb,
roadkill for anyone to pick.

Folks did. Eroded.
Within days
nothing was left -

EXPENSIBLE.
GOING TO HEAVEN.
MY APOLOGIES.

Like to think not all
sit silent in a landfill
the way we one day will.

Like to think some
weren’t sold, piece
by bit, or bulk

for 50¢ - that
some soul saved
& at night slips

out their bent
sleeves like a magician’s -
the needle

placed against the dark
that like a planet spins -
BILLIES BOUNCE

BILLIES BOUNCE -
till sound spills out
& for a side

at least - unless the arm
resets, repeats -
we taps

our tired feet.

[Josh Cohen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really like Kevin Young's poetry, but this was a slog. Mostly ekphrastic poems based upon Basquiat paintings. Tons of them! So many! Also lots of Basquiat elegies. There is some sequencing but the narrative of Basquiat's life is difficult to follow from poem to poem. I also don't think a poet can remove themselves so completely from a huge collection of lyric poems like this one (almost 300 pages) and make it work. A handful of the poems were quite good but not enough to make this one I could recommend.

[Jamil · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You done blown
this taco stand
sky high, AMF..."

"...You are what

we say of saints,
assumed--
You name, mis

-placed, -took
echoes
about the room."

"...anything TO REPEL
GHOSTS, keep
his going at bay..."

"Je t'aime Jean-Michel"

"...YOU WERE ALWAYS A CLIMBER STOP COME DOWN SOME DAY AND SEE US AGAIN END"

"AMF"

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Returned to this magnificent collection after many years and was struck by wonder all over again, at how Young takes Jean-Michel Basquiat's complicated life and renders it beautifully in verse that is all at once ekphrastic, political, historical, and intimate.

[Holly Interlandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basquiat + musical verse = mind explosion.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Young's poetry didn't flow smoothly enough for me and I didn't know who most of the people were that he wrote about. It made it difficult (obviously, since I never finished it,) to get into.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Btilliant. One of the best poets of the day.

[Brian TramueL · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a mind movie. I'm not sure if you consider this a book of lyrics masquerading as poems or vice versa, either way the flow is tight.